Thou Shalt Not Manage Your Emotions

SUMMARY

Do you find it challenging to keep those disruptive feelings in check? Have you been taught that you need to suppress them or push them back and in fact not even be emotional?

The problem is that when you manage your emotions, what you're doing is you are going against something that is natural and happens within your body.

Our emotions are there for a purpose— they are needed so that you can thrive and continue to grow in your environment.

You and I are emotional beings. It's not something that you can turn on and off with a switch.

It happens on purpose first in the physiological, then the psychological, and it's the psychological that you need to take control of so that you can navigate your emotions and they can do exactly what they need to do for you.

So, never let anyone tell you to manage your emotions or stop being so emotional.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you find it challenging to keep those disruptive feelings in check? Have you been taught that you need to suppress them or push them back and in fact not even be emotional?

I'm here to help you to understand that “Thou Shalt Not Manage Your Emotions.”

This has been a teaching for many years. In fact, as someone who works in Emotional Intelligence all around the world, I would use that same term, manage your emotions.

The problem is that when you manage your emotions, what you're doing is you are going against something that is natural and happens within your body that is there for a purpose and is needed so that you can thrive and continue to grow in your environment.

What I want to do is help you to understand what to do.

But before that, let us first get an understanding of what an emotion is.

An emotion is something that is physiological, and it's a sensation that you experience somewhere in your body.

It's a cue, it's a clue telling you that something's going on internally and in your world. And that's what you want to avoid managing.

When you manage that emotion, you don't allow it to go through its course and therefore, you don't read the signal.

Once you get that initial sensation, it triggers your thought patterns. Your thought patterns are based on your experiences, your beliefs and the brilliant thing that you have in your head called the brain.

The brain is a fantastic prediction machine, it predicts based on what you’ve been through, what you have experienced, what you understand and what you normally do. It predicts what's going to happen and then you would normally move towards that.

So, when the thoughts are coming from an internal dialogue, which is unhealthy, then that can make what that initial emotion means something that's totally different.

If I'm feeling some uneasiness in my chest, then I could look at that and go: “I'm having a heart attack.”

Then the thought patterns that will come out of that will definitely take me down the path of anxiety.

However, when we're able to control or manage the meaning that you put on the initial emotion, then it will lead to a particular feeling, which is one you want to experience.

So, you have the emotion, it leads to a feeling, and then it can continue on and escalate and go all over the place and you end up in a state, in a mood.

Instead of managing the emotion, you would want to manage the response to the emotion.

To do that, I like to put in a different word for it and that is to “Navigate Your Emotions.”

So firstly, notice them:

What is it?

What's the sensation?

What's it telling me?

Looking at the physiological side of it, then being able to take yourself through a logical process of labelling how you are feeling.

So, notice it, navigate it, and then you are managing the response to it.

Never let anyone tell you to manage your emotions or stop being so emotional.

You and I are emotional beings. It's not something that you can turn on and off with a switch. It happens on purpose first in the physiological, then the psychological, and it's the psychological that you need to take control of so that you can navigate your emotions and they can do exactly what they need to do for you.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue our conversation around my 10 commandments for enjoying your life.

I'll see you then.